Friday, November 20, 2009

misery is...

...when you've got a massive respiratory bug that has you hacking/blowing out nasties continuously, plus you have two unrelated uncomfortable conditions, and you're in the field in the rain.

Luckily, I didn't have to expend much physical effort during this project. So I could scrunch under an overhang and feel sorry for myself.

The problem with fieldwork is that sometimes it takes a lot of money/coordination to get everything set up, and you may have a small window of opportunity to get everything done. It also may be impossible to get someone to cover for you. So most of the time, I just suck it up if I'm sick.

I've only stopped fieldwork because of illness once. In that case, one of the subcontractors was also fighting the same bug, so when I gave up mid-morning, the response was "yay!" and they tore out of there as if they were afraid I would change my mind.

2 comments:

For me, it's been much the same as you describe... I don't get sick that often, but when I do, it always seems to be at a time when the job has to get done, now. The last week before winter break, when I was teaching, always seemed sickly, but not enough to call in. Then when the pressure was off, I would collapse... and spend the entire break sick and trying to recover. When I was doing forestry field work, again the issue was that this was the day we could get the job done, and the job had to get done.

It's a lot easier to gut it out when you're young. I also think as you get older, you become more sensitive to the idea of trying not to pass the bug on to others.

I give up and stay home pretty easily. I figure that I won't get much done at work anyway, I'll just annoy other people with my coughing or whatever, and spread my illness. And I figure I'll get over it faster if I stay home.